


Die Happy (Nothing More)

by GideonGraystairs



Series: Tumblr Fics [10]
Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Bad Decisions, Break Up, Insecure Alec Lightwood, Introspection, M/M, Post-Book 6: City of Heavenly Fire, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: "Alec," he mutters to himself, his glittery nails curling around the simple page with reverent uncertainty. The name is signed shakily in the bottom right corner.Songfic for All I Want by Kodaline.





	Die Happy (Nothing More)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://raphaelsantiago.co.vu) 06/29/2015.
> 
> Requested by obamaspenisiswhite as a songfic prompt: All I Want//"If you loved me, why'd you leave me" Ship//Clace
> 
> However, I am adamant about never writing Clary as a main character, and especially never writing about a ship involving her, so I offered some Malec instead.

 

_When you said your last goodbye_  
_I died a little bit inside_  
_I lay in tears in bed all night_  
_Alone without you by my side_

* * *

 

The note sits on his table— smudged loops of black pen on wrinkled white paper. It’s unassuming in its placement, folded impeccably into the space between his bowl of keys and random gadgets and the painted vase of carnations Clary had given him for Christmas. In front of it sits a slim piece of ornate metal, a glass tip shimmering at the end.

It is, in all senses of the word, unremarkable.

Except that it shifts when he closes the door behind him and then again when he tosses his keys onto the table beside it. Except that the rushes of air push it open just a little bit each time and he catches a glimpse of the scrawl inside. Except that his hands shake as he reaches for it, his breath bated and his eyes gluing to it with lazer focus. Except that the familiar handwriting it holds is messy and hectic, all over the place and scribbled out in so many places he couldn’t count them if he tried.

Except that, really, it’s anything but unremarkable.

“Alec,” he mutters to himself, his glittery nails curling around the simple page with reverent uncertainty. The name is signed shakily in the bottom right corner.

It reads like a journal entry, so personal and intimate Magnus almost has to look away and fold it back into the space he took it from. It’s heavy, lead in his hands weighing more with each word, and there’s a tone to it that says more than anything he’s heard before.

Alec wouldn’t say goodbye like this.

Except he would, because every word is so very _Alec_ that it **hurts**. They ring with a careful consciousness of the reader and a hesitant kindness full of the fear of being forgotten. It’s Alec and it’s a goodbye and somehow Magnus has never actually thought of the two words going together.

_I’m sorry,_ it says near the end. Like that’ll lessen the pain in some miraculous way. It doesn’t, though, not at all and suddenly the stupid note is falling to the hardwood floor at his feet. It’s not long before he joins it, sinking to the ground as he tries to grab the table for support he’ll never get.

Three years— gone, just like that. The heart that he’d stitched his to has suddenly just disappeared, the stitches ripped away and leaving him with gaping holes to bleed him out. And he can feel it, his life seeping out through the holes, because he’s feeling more and more empty with each passing minute, less and less alive with each second that Alec doesn’t come bursting through the door to tell him it’s nothing but a cruel joke.

But, when he thinks about it, maybe he should have seen this coming, after all.

* * *

 

_So you brought out the best of me,_  
_A part of me I’ve never seen._  
_You took my soul and wiped it clean._  
_Our love was made for movie screens._

 

* * *

 

They were in Versailles this time, meandering down the streets at a leisurely pace as the world passed them by in a haze of dizzying motion. It was snowing and cold, so cold in fact that they huddled together as they moved, scarves and hats and coats and gloves hardly doing as much as the other’s body heat.

Magnus coughed, cuddling closer to his boyfriend with a miserable expression pinned on his glittered face. His voice was childishly put-out when he muttered, “I told you we shouldn’t have come to France this time of year.”

But Alec just laughed, a bright sound that carried clearly across the starry sky as he wrapped a gloved hand around Magnus’s shoulders to bring him closer. “Oh, come on. It’s still beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s _cold_ ,” Magnus griped, wrapping his own arm around Alec’s waist, under his coat where the heat was even greater. His boyfriend swatted him atop the head with an amused expression, grinning down at him widely when he did nothing but shoot him a glare.

The grin vanished quite suddenly, though, and instead drew into a pensive expression Magnus hadn’t the slightest clue on how to read. As it was, he merely frowned up at him from his place curled into his chest and waited for the shadowhunter to tell him what was on his mind. It was a common enough occurrence that he’d learned when to simply leave him to his own thoughts for a moment and when to try to draw them into the open air.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for Alec’s expression to shift into something no longer pensive, but still vexatiously unreadable. “I love you,” he told him firmly, like it was the first time Magnus had ever heard him say it. “You know that, right?”

The warlock rolled his eyes, cuddling back into his chest as they continued to walk. “Of course I know that, idiot. I love you too.”

Alec laughed again, though something about it wasn’t quite as bright this time. “Just checking.”

Magnus snorted out a laugh of his own and that was that. They kept walking, feet crunching through the snow in an even beat as the stars winked above them. They crossed a bridge, the water trickling by beneath them nearly the same colour as Alec’s eyes and the streaks in Magnus’s hair. It wasn’t until they reached the quietest street yet that Alec finally spoke up again in a voice that was so soft it shouldn’t have carried through the air in the way that it did.

“I know this is an age-old argument and all, but I…” he trailed off, swallowing thickly.

“But what?” Magnus sighed, already certain he was going to bring up the immortality thing again. He hadn’t in nearly a year now, ever since that night he’d given him the book, but Magnus could still feel the way Alec worried over it sometimes. He couldn’t blame him for it, it was simply in Alec’s nature to fear loosing the ones he loved, but sometimes he wished the issue with it had never been brought to light in the first place.

“But I just don’t want you to forget, okay? Don’t forget that you love me.”

And there was something in his voice, something fearful in a way that spoke to experience in the matter at hand, something pleading in the notes that were left floating through the air. Magnus frowned, curling his hand tighter around his boyfriend’s waist.

“I won’t,” he said firmly. “I promise.”

* * *

 

_But if you loved me_  
_Why’d you leave me?_  
_Take my body,_  
_Take my body._

 

* * *

 

_I wish I could go back to how things were a year ago._ The words echo through his head again and again like a skipping record, always landing back on them no matter how hard he tries to play the next track. Because what was so different about a year ago? What’s changed since then?

And maybe he tells himself he doesn’t know, that they’re just as happy and okay as they were then, but the truth is he does. He’d have to be blind not to have seen the way Alec was slowly pulling away from him, flinching at the things he said like every word from his mouth hurt as much as a knife to the back. To miss the way he’d started going silent when talk of the future came up and edging out of the room when it turned to thoughts of the past. The way he looked at his siblings like they were slipping through his fingertips and he didn’t have the strength to catch them, the way he looked at his parents like they knew something no one else could.

It was there, right in front of him. A boy who’d lost so much and been hurt so deeply, but had never been given the time to mourn or to even just take stock of all the missing parts.

Still, Magnus finds himself perched at the side of his bed with a bottle of scotch in hand, wondering why Alec couldn’t have just told him that and let him help. That’s what love’s supposed to be, right? Support and healing and help and _being there_.

Because Alec’s not there anymore and how is that supposed to just be okay? How is he supposed to be okay with no one having any idea where he’s gone, only that he’d needed to get away and couldn’t be bothered to give them any means of contacting him? How is it supposed to be okay that he could be dead already, bleeding out in a ditch all alone because he’s left everyone who loves him behind?

The bottle hits the floor with a crash as Magnus curls in on himself, the sob leaving his throat like a swan song.

* * *

 

_All I want is,_  
_And all I need is_  
_To find somebody._  
_I’ll find somebody._

 

* * *

 

He has to find him, has to tell him he loves him and he can help and loneliness is never the way to go. He has to, he just **has to**.

So he snatches up the note and wracks his brain for the tracking spell he hasn’t used in years.


End file.
